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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Bedtime math is back!

My kids loved the first Bedtime Math book (by Laura Overdeck) when it came out last year. We read through the whole book multiple times, and it was fun to see my then 3-year-old and 6-year-old work through the book together. So we made sure to pre-order the sequel, Bedtime Math 2: This Time It's Personal. It just came out this week.

If you liked the first installment, there are even more reasons to like this one. For starters, there are 4 problems, instead of 3, for each story. The fourth is labeled a "bonus," but basically it's a new level that is just a little trickier than the "big kids" problems. So that extends the readership to kids who might be just a bit beyond the big kids level. It's also a nice development, in general, to have more problems per story, as it makes each individual story more satisfying and gets kids thinking about the topic longer.

I've also found that some of the "wee ones" problems in the second book are more accessible to the very earliest mathematicians. For instance, some problems involve counting things in the pictures. This makes Bedtime Math even more of a family activity, as you can potentially involve a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old. Whether they're going to bed at the same time is, of course, a different matter, but bedtime math doesn't just have to be done at bedtime!

Of course, while Bedtime Math is like a bedtime story, I was informed by my 4-year-old the other night that it couldn't take a story's place. "Bedtime math is just math!" he told me. "I need a story too!" Anything to stay up later, right?